Brian Thompson: No drama in my daughter’s school lunch

There is no drama in my daughter’s school lunch. I just realized this the other day. There’s no mystery. No excitement. No surprise.

No “ick!” And I don’t know how I feel about that.

Because isn’t that what school lunch is all about? It was for me.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot recently. At my house, I’m the lunchmaker. And I have very strict orders. It’s like working for Donald Trump. The Donald wants it made like this. The Donald wants this and that in his sack. Just right or you’re out. Fired! Like gone, dad. You dig it? Very demanding.

Well, not demanding, really. It’s more consistent. My daughter likes what she likes, and that’s all that she likes. She’s six! So each morning I get up and make the same thing: a peanut butter sandwich with the crusts cut off and sliced into quarters. Some Goldfish. Some boxed apple juices. Some kind of cookie/sweet/treat. Like an assembly line, I do it every day.

She grabs her pink and white lunchbox each morning and trots off to school. My work is done. Kid goes to school happy. Knows there are no surprises. Job well done, dad. You’re not fired yet! Keep it up.

But what occurred to me is that she’s missing out — REALLY missing out! — on one of the best parts of grade school: the mystery lunch.

What was in there? Would it be divine? Would I end up in the hospital? Would people recoil in terror when it emerged? Would I lose friends over it?

There was the leftover lunch. Sandwiches made with thick chunks of London broil, dry and tough like semi truck tires. I tore at it with my teeth, like some kind of starved lion devouring a wildebeest. Bits flew everywhere. I growled and cursed. My neck muscles ached. I don’t know why my mother never cut them into thin, manageable slices. Maybe it’s because she didn’t believe in sharp kitchen knives. Couldn’t cut them any thinner than the size of icebergs. Maybe because she thought they were better that way. That children should burn as many calories eating their food as they gain digesting it. Either way, it was like eating slices of a 2-by-4.

There were drumsticks from leftover yellow rice and chicken — grains of soggy rice and sad, deflated peas stuck to them. Meatloaf thick in chunky onions and crusty ketchup. Unidentifiable things wrapped in foil. Did it land in my lunch instead of the garbage can?

My mother was a wonderful cook, but her elaborate meals didn’t always translate on day two.

Life got tougher after I graduated from the rusted steel Star Wars lunchboxes to brown paper bags. They had the strength of perforated toilet paper, and good luck if you got them wet. And they were always wet. At the bottom of every lunch bag was a frozen juice box. (It never thawed by lunch. Like a deranged beaver, I gnawed the top off and drank it like a slushy.)

All that condensation worked its way through the paper towel wrapped around it and cut a hole through the bottom of the bag. That way when some hurried young child — me! — grabbed it, the contents exploded across the classroom — bits of potato chips and apples flying in every direction. It looked like a fireworks display.

The condensation also turned sandwich bread into wet kitchen sponges. What can only be described as “bread-mush.” It glued itself to whatever meat product was inside. Goodness me, let it not be tuna fish!

Did I say it, tuna fish? It’s a wonder more of us didn’t die of botulism or other foul deaths. Tuna sandwiches spent the whole morning sitting unrefrigerated in a classroom cubby, incubating all manner of microorganisms dreaming of spring break in a young child’s gastrointestinal system.

Soggy, lukewarm tuna sandwiches were rough. Three bites in and all my classmates had scooted to the far end of the table. There they placed bets on what kind of horrible death I would meet: “Five bucks says his ears fall off and he turns blue.” “I bet he speaks in tongues and levitates!”

Every day it was like this. Every day a new lunch-time adventure.

My poor, mystery-hating daughter has it so good. So easy. Free of the drama and excitement and terror. Free of foodborne illnesses and jaw-testing leftovers. Able — everyday! — to know with confidence what awaits in her nice, sturdy lunchbox.